1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image output apparatus capable of switching between a waiting state in which the apparatus is maintained in a state of being ready to output an image while limiting a part of power supply to an output unit, and a low-power state in which a power supply to the output unit is limited, and to an image output method, a storage medium, and a program therefore.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image output apparatus such as a copying machine in the related art is being developed to a complex machine having a plurality of functions such as facsimile transmission and reception using a scanner or a printer provided in the copying machine, and PDL (Page Description Language) printing in association with recent tendency of digitization.
In contrast to such complexification of the copying machine described above, energy saving when the machine is not in use has been strongly desired as will be seen from the establishment of the Energy Star standard. To cope with such requirement, in the related art, power saving of the apparatus has been promoted by automatically cutting the part of current flow to the units that consume much power in the complex machine, such as a fixing unit, or by cutting the power of the copying machine after a predetermined time has elapsed in a state in which the complex machine is not used.
Generally, in an image output apparatus such as a printer and a copying machine employing an electrophotographic system, for example, a toner image supplied to a photoreceptor drum is transferred onto a recording sheet and then fixed thereon by pressing and heating the recording sheet at a fixing temperature in the order of 170° C. by means of a fixing roller having a heater integrated therein, for example. However, when the surface of the fixing roller is kept at the fixing temperature constantly even after a series of printing procedures has finished in order to be ready for the next printing, much power is consumed for nothing.
Therefore, the image output apparatus is adapted to be migrated to a low-power mode that saves energy in the apparatus by reducing the amount of power supply to the heater to keep the fixing roller at around 60° C., or suspending the power supply to the heater when a state in which no printing job is performed in each image output apparatus is continued for a predetermined time period (one minute, for example).
The mode to be ready for performing the printing job immediately as described above is referred to as “waiting mode”, the mode in which the amount of power supply is reduced in a state in which no printing job is performed as described above is referred to as “low-power mode”, the mode in which no power is supplied is referred to as “off-mode”, and the time period required for recovering from the low-power mode or from the off-mode to the waiting mode is referred to as “recovery time”.
On the other hand, as one of the printing systems utilizing the conventionally known image output apparatus, a technique for supplying an image scanned by the scanner positioned remotely from the image output apparatus to an image output apparatus that can start image forming in a shortest time period as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-284263 is known.
However, in the invention disposed in the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-284263, how to select any one of image output apparatus on the network is settled, but there is room for improvement in effective output of images read by a feeder in the mainframe of the copying machine.